


In Which Lio Fotia Borrows His Dad's Oakleys

by orphan_account



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Albino Lio Fotia, Drabble, Fluff, Gen, Ignis is a dad, Post-Canon, Team as Family, The Promare Didn't Leave (Promare)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lio realizes Burning Rescue is more his family than he thought, courtesy of a migraine, of all things.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	In Which Lio Fotia Borrows His Dad's Oakleys

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was a special request

It’s been only a few months since the Second Great World Blaze. Cleanup is still underway and Lio is on pretrial probation waiting to face up for his “crimes” as the leader of Mad Burnish. The judge and prosecutor worked with Ignis to strike a deal that Lio would work for Burning Rescue to help with recovery after the Parnassus crash, and all that time would count against whatever sentence he received, if any. Lio doesn’t much like it—who would?—but he can’t complain overmuch, especially because Ignis had vouched for Gueira and Meis as well. Part of that deal, however, had involved keeping Lio in the firehouse—nobody was yet sure of the extent of his abilities now after the Promare spiked and withdrew, and the public still harbors a fair amount of distrust and fear towards the Burnish.

While many details about the fateful hours leading up to the crash of the Parnassus and the SGWB have come out, like Foresight’s status as a Burnish and his horrific experiments, neither Galo nor Lio have done any interviews yet and Foresight’s lawyers have made him unavailable for comment. As a result, precious little is known about their fight outside those three. Lio doesn’t know when—if—he’ll ever feel ready to speak, but ruminating on it for too long never fails to give him a headache.

He puts his elbows on the desk in front of him and cradles his face in his hands, sighing. Staring at a computer screen, working on the thankless task of matching rescued Burnish to Foresight’s records, and sitting under the harsh fluorescent lights of the back office have only exacerbated his stress headache and triggered a side-effect of his albinism, his photophobia, which has a nasty habit of turning headaches into migraines.

Squinting at the screen does nothing to help with the sharp pains in Lio’s eyes and head, but it’s all he can do. He’s thought about sunglasses in moments like these before, but never follows through once the episode passes. Sometimes, the Promare help him with these light-induced headaches. He glances over his shoulder, wincing at the spike of pain the action sends down his cervical spine. There’s nobody in the hallway outside the office and Lio hears the echoes of chatter and tools in the garage. The coast seems clear.

Lio calls up his fire to his hands, staring down at them as the jewel-like solid flame envelops them, weightless heat brushing over his skin and soothing fingers that ache from typing. Lio raises his hands to his temples, covering his ears, and closes his eyes as the familiar-alien flames surround his head with warmth. Pink light filters though his eyelids, the heat and gentle wordless whispering of the Promare touching the pain of the headache.

“Lio.”

Lio jumps at the sudden, disapproving sound of his name in Ignis’s mouth. He recalls the Promare, the flames vanishing, and opens his eyes, wincing at the light. Lio twists in his chair to face the door. Ignis stands in the doorway of the office, arms crossed and expression inscrutable as always. “You know you’re not supposed to,” Ignis says. Lio does know. It’s a condition of his pretrial probation that, if he retains his Burnish ability, he isn’t allowed to use it until the court has assessed his remaining abilities and sentenced or acquitted him. Lio sighs through his nose, squinting and doing his best to meet what he imagines to be Ignis’s gaze behind his impenetrable shades.

Ignis doesn’t move. Lio silently grits his teeth against the pain of the fluorescent glare. He knows this game that men play, one of intimidation through stoicism; if Lio wins, the incident should be forgotten—a spear of light-pain burns Lio’s optic nerve like a fuse and he flinches full-body as his brain explodes. The burst of Promare flame around his head is completely involuntary, a reflex. He groans through gritted teeth and suppresses the flare, but he can’t bring himself to open his eyes. He grinds the heels of his palms into the eye sockets, hissing through his teeth.

“Headache, kid?” Ignis asks, his voice sounding painfully magnified through Lio’s migraine. Lio grunts in reply. “Here.”

Lio cracks one eye just enough to see through the pale haze of his lashes, and Ignis is holding a pair of sunglasses out to Lio— _his_ sunglasses. He hesitates a moment and Ignis advances into the office, insisting Lio take the shades.

“They’ll help with the light sensitivity.” Ignis practically presses the shades into Lio’s hand and Lio gives in. The glasses are the mirrored wrap-around kind—Oakleys, Lio thinks—favored by dads and cops. They’re too big for Lio’s face and warmed by Ignis’s skin, but they’re significantly tinted. Lio is hesitant to open his eyes, fearing another burst of skull-splitting pain, but when he cautiously cracks his eyes, nothing happens. His head is still pounding in time with his heart, the pressure feeling like it might burst his cranium with each beat, but the light isn’t making it worse anymore.

“Thanks,” he mumbles to Ignis, raising his gaze to the captain’s. Ignis’s face looks almost empty without his shades, like he’s missing a facial feature. The captain dips his head in acknowledgment.

“If you need something for the pain, you know where the med locker is. No more flares, okay?” he says, turning to leave the office.

“Got it,” Lio mutters, waiting until Ignis’s footsteps disappear down the hallway to lower his sensitive head to the desk. The pounding does not subside, and as much as Lio chafes against the rules to just light his head on fire to burn the headache out, he suspects Ignis will somehow know—Burning Rescue is still armed to the teeth with Burnish flare detection tech, after all—and he might not forgive a second infraction after a warning. It takes Lio several minutes to rouse himself enough to stand without doubling over to grab his fragile skull to keep it from shattering.

Getting down to the garage with all the lockers is a long and arduous journey that seems to take Lio hours, concentrating only on putting one foot before the other endlessly. Arriving at the lockers almost comes as a surprise to him.  One moment he sees nothing but the oil-stained concrete under his feet, the next moment his outstretched hand hits hollow metal. Lio looks up and  moves his way down the row to the last locker on the end labeled with a red cross. He opens the locker—the thud, click, and rattle of the latch gouging at the inside of his skull—and slowly paws through the contests to find the painkillers.

“What’s up, Lio? Something wrong?” Galo calls from across the garage. Lio wishes he hadn’t, but knows he’s well-intentioned.

“Headache,” Lio says dully when Galo arrives with Varys in tow.

“Ahh,” Galo sighs with understanding. “Hey, want me to grab the naproxen for you?” He reaches easily over Lio’s head, rifles around one-handed on the top shelf, and pulls down the bottle. He hands it to Lio who fumbles with it a moment before popping it open, tipping a handful of pills into his hand, and knocking them all back dry. Varys and Galo both shout with alarm, their voices ricocheting around inside Lio’s head like bullets.

“Are you crazy?” Varys asks.

“Lio—hang on—‘do not induce vomiting’” Galo reads off the bottle, “don’t throw up!”

“Every time you shout, it makes that a little harder,” Lio mutters under his breath. The guys’ shouting attracts Aina and Lucia’s attention and they come over to investigate. Galo explains at maximum volume what Lio’s just done, while the Burnish in question slides down the lockers to sit with his head between his knees. “Please,” he mutters to the floor, “I just have a headache and I’m not allowed to use my fire to red rid of it.”

“He says he just has a headache and can’t get rid of if with fire,” Lucia announces at high volume. Lio glances over to find she was evidently on her hands and knees next to him. Her shrill voice, while painful, is effective at cutting through the sound of everybody else talking over each other.

“I’ll burn the extra naproxen off quickly. I’m fine,” Lio says softly and Lucia relays it.

“But what about your liver, Lio?” Galo asks. Lio shrugs without raising his head.

“I’m Burnish,” he says loudly enough for everyone to hear. Then, serendipitously, the naproxen kicks in. Lio sighs and gingerly rests his head back against the lockers.

“You’re wearing Ignis’s shades,” Aina observes, something like the beginnings of a laugh in her voice. Lio hums without turning his head. He rather likes the power that comes with the opacity of the lenses—nobody actually knows where he’s looking.

“Does that make you the captain?” Galo jokes.

“Maybe.” Lio gives a tired half-grin. “What are you all doing standing around? Don’t you have jobs to do?”

The crew chuckles.

“So did he _give_ you his shades or…?” Aina asks.

“Yeah. When the headache came on and I tried to burn it out, he appeared and offered me the shades to help with the photophobia,” Lio explains.

“Are you scared of _light,_ Lio?” Galo asks disbelievingly. 

Lio snorts. “No. It’s sensitivity to light.  Fluorescent light seems to trigger it. I get migraines.”

“I should put LEDs in your office,” Lucia says. He hums.

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Man, Ignis is such a dad,” Aina chuckles. “He just knows when one of his kids is in distress and pops in to offer the glasses off his face.”

“He’s not my _dad,”_ Lio protests halfheartedly.

“Oh, come on, man, everyone who joins the crew becomes Ignis’s kid. Congrats on getting a new dad, Lio,” Varys laughs. “Those glasses don’t fit you at all.”

“They don’t,” Lio agrees.

“You kinda look like a kid trying on his dad’s stuff,” Aina says. “Where’s Ignis’s coat?”

Remi, previously uninvolved in the conversation, appears with his ever- p resent cup of coffee. “Why do you need Captain’s coat?”

“Look at Lio,” Aina says. Remi gives Lio a long look down on the ground.

“You look like a little kid, Fotia,” he says dryly.

“Thanks,” Lio deadpans.

“Found it!” Lucia shouts from across the garage. She darts back over and throws the big jacket on Lio. “Put it on!”

“Why?” Lio asks, disentangling himself from the crinkly neon plastic. Aina holds up her phone. “Oh. Oh no. There will be no photographic evidence.”

“It'll be cute,” Aina croons. “We’ll put it up on the board. Ignis will love it.”

“I highly doubt it,” Lio objects.

“Oh come on,” Galo wheedles, clasping his hands and affecting the most obnoxious approximation of puppy-dog eyes possible.  As much as Lio hates  that stupid expression, he hates even more that it  actually works on him. Grumbling under his breath, Lio  stands and puts his arms into the sleeves. His hands don’t come close to the cuffs. It’s absolutely swallowing him whole.

“Aww,” Aina says obnoxiously. “Say cheese!” Lio stone-faces and the camera flashes. Aina laughs at the picture. “Oh, this is classic.”

“ C an I take this off now?” Lio  almost  whines, flapping the over-long sleeves for effect.

“You’re too cute,” Aina laughs and snaps another picture, unfortunately of Lio doing the flappy sleeves. “Sweater paws!”

“Please never call them that within my hearing again,” Lio says flatly.

“How touching.”

Everybody jumps and looks up, finding Ignis standing above them on the catwalk outside his office. “What are you all doing standing around? Don’t you have jobs to do?” he barks.

“Yes, sir!” the crew shouts, scattering, but Lio is rooted to the spot. Ignis had used Lio’s words. He must have seen the whole thing.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better, kid,” Ignis says to Lio, and winks before returning to his office. Lio grins to himself behind Ignis’s over-sized glasses and massive coat, just like a little kid trying on his firefighter dad’s stuff.


End file.
